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From Pulp to Prose

At Unjacketed, we believe popular fiction—especially romance and thrillers—is better than it has ever been. The plots are tighter and more creative, the pacing is stronger, and the dialogue is often sharper and more natural than in previous generations of pulp fiction. These genres have evolved in meaningful ways, and they deserve recognition for that progress.

But despite those improvements, too much modern commercial fiction still suffers from what we call gray prose.

Gray prose is functional. It moves the story forward. It delivers dialogue, action, and plot with efficiency. In that sense, it resembles a screenplay: lean, clear, and easy to consume. But prose should do more than transmit information. Unlike film, writing has direct access to the reader’s senses and imagination. It should not merely show events—it should make us inhabit them.

We want prose that engages all five senses. We want texture, scent, temperature, rhythm. We want metaphor and simile. We want language that doesn’t simply identify objects, but evokes experience.

A scene from Losers by Harley Laroux illustrates both the progress and the limitations of much modern romance. Laroux includes smell in a scene, which already places the writing above much of the genre. She gives us parmesan and garlic rather than omitting scent entirely. Layering sensory details is good craft.

But prose can go further.

Instead of merely naming what is present—parmesan and garlic—why not evoke the sensation itself? Why not write: The kitchen smelled faintly sour, layered with the earthy richness of parmesan and the warm, spicy bite of garlic.

That is the difference between naming and evoking.

We also want more showing and less telling.

Modern romance often relies heavily on first-person narration and internal monologue to communicate emotional reality. Readers are told exactly how a character feels, what they desire, whom they fear, and why they are conflicted. Increasingly, readers even expect both romantic partners to receive alternating first-person POV chapters so nothing remains ambiguous.

We reject the idea that intimacy requires mind-reading.

In real life, we rarely know someone loves us because we hear every internal thought. We know because of the way they look at us. The pause before they speak. The tension in their hands. The way their body changes when we enter a room. Love, desire, obsession, resentment—these are all legible through behavior.

Good prose should trust readers to perceive those signals.

Too often, romance tells us what a character is instead of allowing us to discover it. A character is labeled toxic, jealous, dangerous, broken, obsessive, or possessive long before their behavior earns those labels. Rather than building psychological truth through scene, the narrative explains it outright.

Telling is fast. Showing creates immersion.

For example, in Losers, the narration describes a character this way: “Behind his blue eyes and charming smile, Kyle was temperamental, jealous, and prone to fits of anger.”

This efficiently communicates the author’s intent, but it asks the narrator to do all the interpretive work. We are told Kyle is volatile instead of being allowed to witness that volatility ourselves.

What makes this especially interesting is that elsewhere in the same chapter, the author demonstrates exactly how powerful showing can be. Later, Lucas’s gaze is described as dragging over Jessica’s skin “as harshly as teeth and nails.”

That single metaphor accomplishes more than a paragraph of exposition. Without directly labeling Lucas as violent, dangerous, or predatory, the prose makes us feel the threat he poses. His menace becomes visceral and physical. We experience Jessica’s discomfort in our own bodies.

That is the difference between telling and showing.

Telling gives us conclusions. Showing gives us experience.

At Unjacketed, we want writing that trusts the reader.

We want books that do more than entertain. We want books that intoxicate the senses, reward close reading, and remind us that language itself can be art.